Off-colour Daley scrapes into Olympic semis

By Eurosport

11/08/2012 at 12:34

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The shine looked to be coming off British diving and Olympics poster boy Tom Daley, as he narrowly qualified for the men's 10-metre platform semi-finals, coming dangerously close to crashing ignominiously out in the heats.

Throughout the six dives he rarely looked to be performing at the level required to seriously challenge China's Lin Yue or Qiu Bo for a medal, and his fate seemed sealed on his fifth dive, a back three and a half somersault, when he entered the water bent.

Qiu and Lin qualified in the top two places, just ahead of Germany's Sascha Klein.

“That was far too close for my liking I can tell you that,” said Daley.

“It was a tough competition for many reasons. I don’t normally compete at that time of night for one and then the second was the fact that there were 32 competitors in it which meant having to wait half an hour between dives."

While Daley would have felt relief at squeezing through, he would have perhaps have watched on with fear as favourite Qui Bo of China finished top of the pile with a phenomenal points tally of 563.70.

But rather than focus on who did well, Daley is quick to point out that he wasn’t the only one to struggle.

“For me you can never know what will happen in an Olympic Games,” he added.

“David Boudia only just qualified in 18th and he won a silver medal at the World Championships last year, you have Victor Minibaev who came second in the World Cup this year and he is down in the pack too.

“So that is what makes the Olympics such a tough competition because you have to go three rounds to make the final and anything can happen.”